Introduction Social Psychology is a part of psychology, which studies human behavior in the society. Overall, this section of the science is one of the most useful parts of psychology. People have to know which variables affect their behavior and change them if they are not appropriate. In my essay I discuss three theories of social psychology such as: fundamental attribution error, cognitive dissonance and obedience to authority. Fundamental Attribution Error Fundamental Attribution Error is one of the social psychology theories. This error explains the inappropriate judgment of other individuals (Wortman & Loftus, 1992). People would rather describe behavior of others according to their internal force without thinking about external reasons. Usually, people do not know many factors, which can affect someone and they would like to make a conclusion based on stereotypes or other experiences before. There are might be two phases of Fundamental Attribution Error. The first one is to make quick reasoning about someone’s behavior based on his or her personality. If the person sees a mistake in judgment, he or she can go the next level of analyze. The second phase is to understand deeper and more accurate the reasons for behavior of others. Because of this time taking process people do not consider the second phase as necessity. One of my personal experiences of Fundamental Attribution Error happened in Prague. One of my friends came late for meeting with me in early morning, and I had an opinion that this person is not punctual and lazy to dress up earlier. One week later I came late for different meeting with exactly the same friend, but I tried to explain my delay with other reasons; such as my tram was broken. After that, I asked... ... middle of paper ... ...nd contraction of muscles better. We cut frog’s legs to see how they move. I did not want to follow these instructions, as it was very brutal for me and I felt sorry for animals. My teacher repeated that I have to do this experiment in order to received additional points to my grade. Even thought I did not want to create any pain for frog I made this experiment. Obedience to authority can explain many wrong decisions in humans’ history. For me it is more a fear to be punished by the authority than to be afraid of this person. It is more appropriate for people who know their authority to use it in inspiration and supporting someone’s ideas and behavior. Conclusion On my opinion, the most powerful theory is cognitive dissonance as it affects our mental state. Due to my research the social psychology can be very effective in studying and in changing humans’ behavior.
In the movie Twelve Angry Men, tells the story of an ongoing debate within a jury whether to find the defendant guilty or not for murdering his father. While watching the movie, I couldn’t help but realize that there was a lot of techniques used by the juries and lawyers to sway the vote in either directions. I was able analyze the movie using social psychology as my main tool. I could relate the movie to the topic of social psychology by comparing it to Asch’s experiment and the act of conformity and the act of persuasion.
As a manager/business leader, being aware of the Fundamental Attribution Error is applicable in a number of ways - are some of my employees struggling or succeeding because of who they are and what they're willing to do, or am I missing something about the context, the structure of their lives, the support that shapes their days and
Fundamental attribution error is defined by Aronson (2013, p. 89) as “the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to under estimate the role of situational factors”. Attributions are only inferences and the attributions we assign to certain events may not always be the correct explanation. Contradictory as it may seem, Aronson (2013) explains that attribution theory describes the way in which people justify the causes of their own and other people’s behavior. I found out the meaning of fundamental attribution error one morning at work. I answered the phone at work only to be accosted by an irate wife of a client who was carrying on about her white bedroom rug that had a few stains on it. In an attempt to rectify the situation I made several suggestions on how she could prevent these stains from becoming worse but apparently my suggestions fell on deaf ears, because her dialog only became more accusatory and caustic. I managed to end the call by promising to have the rug cleaned and advising the nursing staff to be more conscientious when handling Mr. C . I immediately judged her to be “crazy “ and “ obsessive” and the rest of my staff agreed that Mrs. C. was indeed an unreasonable, ranting lunatic. For four days I continued to believe that Mrs. C.’s telephone rant was in fact due to her cranky, lunacy (an internal attribution) and ridiculous over attention to minor details. In fact, I hate to admit this, but I believe she should have been grateful for the nurses who came to her home to help her husband, since he was a very large, heavy man that required complex care.
Cognitive social psychology emerged in the mid-twentieth century as a critique of the dominant behaviourist movement and quickly became the main force behind the American school of Psychological Social Psychology. (Hollway, 2007). With its roots in mainstream psychology, cognitive social psychology has a primarily quantitative methodology, relying heavily on statistical methods in controlled conditions, and adheres to the hypothetico-deductive paradigm found in other sciences. The main focus of this form of social psychology is on how the individual behaves in controlled situations and this is examined through experiments and social psychometric data gathering.
The article also talks about attribution as being a three-step process through which we perceive others as causal agents. The three-step process talked about includes perception of the action (You saw it), judgment of intention (You/they meant to do that), and attribution of disposition (What you think of the action).
Authority cannot exist without obedience. Society is built on this small, but important concept. Without authority and its required obedience, there would only be anarchy and chaos. But how much is too much, or too little? There is a fine line between following blindly and irrational refusal to obey those in a meaningful position of authority. Obedience to authority is a real and powerful force that should be understood and respected in order to handle each situation in the best possible manner.
The fundamental attribution error is an important concept in psychology. Social psychology studies people’s behaviors, believes and attitudes. In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error or what is known as the correspondence bias or attribution effect, means the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the person, rather than external factors, which could be in explaining the reasons behind that person 's behaviors. In other words, usually when you see somebody doing something, you usually tend to think it is more related to their personality instead of thinking about the situation the person might be in and they call that the first look. We all do that without being aware of it, sometimes you judge someone based of what he looks like, or where is he wearing and where is he standing without knowing what is the reason behind his attitude. We can be influenced by culture, books, films and other things that effect our way of seeing the others. From a general perspective, Fundamental Attribution Error explanations how the fundamental attribution error have focused on general worldviews for our behaviors, believes and attitudes.
Attribution is a psychological theory addressing the process by which individuals explain the causes of behaviour and events. This is linked to Weiner’s original attribution model and involves whether an individual attributes their successes to factors that are stable or unstable, and internal or external. Weiner’s attribution theory suggests that:
The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) is a concept within social psychology that assumes when someone is aggressive, it is due to a flaw in their personality as opposed to a reaction to their personal circumstances (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2015). However, there is typically a situational reason for the other person’s behavior that is not taken into account through the FAE (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2015). I have been guilty of making the FAE myself; for example, I can think of two situations where my frustration led me to believe that there were flaws in my antagonists’ characters. Recently, my mother wanted me to assist my brother in scheduling classes for the semester. Since I was annoyed that my mother was insisting that I assist him when
People have a strong need to understand the question “why” because it helps us to understand the world around us. Attribution theory provides one way to understand how people answer the question “why” and make sense of their worlds. Attribution theory seeks to help people make sense of their world we are being judge by others and a lot of us can’t help but to judge. Causal locus is the core of Attribution theory. The primary causes for behaviour can be an internal or external locus. An internal locus is also called dispositional because it reflects a person’s disposition shaping the behaviour. An external locus is also called situational because it reflects environmental factors shaping the behaviour. The metaphor of scientists guides Attribution
Weiner developed a theoretical framework that has become very influential in social psychology today. Attribution theory assumes that people try to determine why people do what they do, that is, interpret causes to an event or behaviour. A three-stage process underlies an attribution:
The first theory is the fundamental attribution error. This theory argues that people tend to over estimate the role of dispositional factors and underestimate the situational factors. Psychologists argue that this is such a common error because humans tend to think of themselves as flexible, and ever changing. People do not like to think of themselves as a “type” of person. When a person does not have enough information to make a balanced decision, they attribute behavior to disposition.
PSYC321-Social Psychology taught me about the ways in which people are influenced by others, how people make decisions, inferences we make about others’ attitudes and personalities, and influence of situational and variables on behavior. I learned that people behave the way that they do for so many reasons. Behaviors are caused more by the social situation than they are by the characteristics of the individuals. One of the concepts that I recall is Lewin’s equation which indicates that the behavior of a person at any given time depends on both the characteristics of the person and the influence of the social situation. Some of the things we do can also be attributed to cultural influences and differences that exist between societies. I found
Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual's behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. That determination depends largely on three factors: distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency. Our perceptions of people differ from our perceptions of inanimate objects.
In this experiment, we see how the first group judged the behavior through internal attributions. The second group however, watched a video that influenced their decision in attributing the circumstances and the situation rather than the individual traits of the character in the excerpt. This experiment is an example of how the Attribution Theory and Covariation Model affect the behavioral judgment of people.